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If you are like most credit card owners who frequently reach for your plastic when paying for purchases, you have probably been asked – at least from time to time – to present a valid form of identification along with the card. Most consumers have no objection to this requirement, because they assume it is for their own protection to prevent an imposter from fraudulently using their card. But many consumer advocates do have a problem with this common practice.

That’s because although it is fine for a merchant to ask you for your ID, the position and policy of companies that issue credit cards is clear. Except in special circumstances that are an exception to the rule, the merchant can ask for ID. But if you don’t show an ID the merchant is still required to complete the credit card transaction.

According to a recent article in the Baltimore Sun newspaper, MasterCard and Visa rules state that a retailer can’t decline a sale because a consumer refuses to present additional identification. They ca

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This morning’s job report in Canada was very impressive. Not only did the Canadian job machine create 93K jobs in June, but the level of total employment reached its pre-recession peak. This is much more robust than its U.S. counterpart whose payroll remains 5.4% below its peak level. This shows a big cyclical difference between the current state of the Canadian labour market and the one in the U.S. What does this mean for monetary policy? Canada can no longer simply import U.S. monetary policy whose rates remain extremely expansionary. As today’s Hot Charts shows, the year-over-year growth rate in employment is now more than 2% in Canada.

Deep negative real policy rates helped restore domestic demand since the end of the recession. Now that the goal has been achieved, such a policy is no longer warranted. Although the tone of the latest press release by the Bank of Canada was particularly oriented toward the international situation, it is now time for the BoC to set policy based on domestic developments. An Read full post…

Especially during the busy summer travel and vacation season, lots of credit card consumers will be faced with an often-perplexing question or choice. Should they go ahead and pay extra for auto insurance when renting a car, or decline it and hope that they are covered by their credit card membership’s insurance program?

Sometimes the cost of a daily rental car insurance premium is a huge additional expense that can escalate the cost of auto rentals into the stratosphere. But without it, if there is an accident, the renter could wind up owing a car rental company the price of a brand new car. So when a car rental representative poses the question it can be a little intimidating or downright scary, although you may already have plenty of coverage in the event of an accident because of your regular auto policy plus the coverage provided by your credit card company.

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• The ECB’s 12-month long-term refinancing operation (LTRO) conducted in June 2009 expired today, and this reduces the liquidity position by EUR442bn. The expiry is financed by two new ECB operations. Yesterday, EUR132bn was allocated in the three-month LTRO, and today EUR111bn was allocated in a six-day fine-tuning operation. The total roll is therefore EUR243bn and this reduces the overall excess liquidity by around EUR200bn.

• The total roll is close to the expected EUR250-300bn. However, the composition was a surprise, as it was expected that the bulk of the roll would be carried out in the 3M LTRO rather than the six-day fine-tuning operation. Most likely, some banks would prefer the flexibility to roll every week rather than locking themselves in for three months. This is possible as the ECB maintains full allotment at the weekly main refinancing operations (MRO) until mid-October, possibly longer. F

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